Nios SPI

January 2003, Version 2.1

Data Sheet

General Description

The Nios serial peripheral interface (SPI) module is an Altera SOPC Builder library component included in the Nios development kit. The SPI module is a simple, industry standard communications interface commonly used in embedded systems. Many semiconductor manufacturers sell a variety of sensor, conversion, and control devices that use an SPI. The SOPC Builder SPI library component has available system choices to define device logic and interface signals on the Nios development board. The SPIs Verilog HDL or VHDL source code is available for development and includes the necessary software subroutines for easy system integration. The Nios SPI peripheral is 3-wired and can be used as either a master or slave device. It allows software to communicate with one or more external devices over an SPI bus. Software controls and communicates with the SPI peripheral through five memory-mapped, 16-bit registers accessed by a standard Nios peripheral bus connection. When configured as a master device, the SPI can interface with up to 16 independent SPI slave devices.

Functional Description

The SPI peripheral extends the conventional protocol by allowing more than one external SPI peripheral to share the same miso, mosi, and sclk pins. Each SPI peripheral instantiated within a Nios system has at least four interface signals (that is, physical I/O pins on the Altera programmable logic device): miso, mosi, sclk, and ss_n. Master devices interfacing with multiple SPI slave devices have one ss_n signal for each slave device. The function of these signals depends on whether the SPI peripheral is operating as a master or slave device.

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DS-NIOSSPI-2.1

Nios SPI Data Sheet

Table 1 lists pin names, numbers, and types for both master and slave configurations. Table 1. Pin Descriptions Pin Polarity Name
miso mosi sclk ss_n High High Low

Master Device Number of Pins

1 1 1 116

Slave Device Number of Pins

1 1 1 1

Pin Type
Input Output Output Output

Pin Type
Output Input Input Input

The miso (master in, slave out) signal carries synchronous data from the slave to the master device. The mosi (master out, slave in) signal carries synchronous data from the master to the slave device. The sclk signal is driven by the master, synchronizing all data transfers. Each SPI slave device has one ss_n signal. The ss_n signal is an active-low slave input/master output pin. Slave devices do not respond to transactions unless their ss_n input signal is driven low. 1 Typical SPI peripherals set their miso output pinswhen not selectedto high impedance. The Altera-provided SPI slave peripheral drives an undefined value on its miso output pin when not selected. If an SPI slave device is connected to an external (off-chip) SPI master device, the select input can be used to control a tri-state pin outside the Nios system module. This option is necessary when multiple slave devices share the same SPI bus.

The SPI peripheral can be used in conjunction with the DMA peripheral to allow streaming data transfers between the SPI and memory.

See the Nios DMA Data Sheet for details on the DMA library component. The SPI peripheral consists of these user-visible components: I I A memory-mapped register space (software interface) SPI bus interface pins (hardware interface to other SPI devices)

The register control bits determine when data can be read from and written to the memory-mapped registers. All data is transmitted via the SPI bus interface pins, miso, mosi, sclk, and ss_n.

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

Master Mode Operation

The SPI peripheral operates as a master device if it is configured as such in the PTF at design time. In general, the SPI protocol does not support multi-master systems. The master initiates all data transactions, and every transaction is both a receive and transmit operation. The master device transmits a new data bit on the mosi pin and the slave device drives a new data bit on the miso pin on each active clock edge. The SPI peripheral transmitter logic consists of an n-bit (where n is a value from 1 to 16) txdata transmit holding register and an n-bit transmit shift register (the number of data bits is determined by the databits PTF assignment). Software starts an SPI transaction by writing a transmit-data value to the txdata register. The transmit shift register directly feeds the mosi data pin. Data is shifted out to mosi either least significant bit (LSB) first or most significant bit (MSB) first, depending on the lsbfirst PTF assignment. The transmit shift register is loaded automatically from the txdata register whenever a serial transmit shift operation is not currently in process. 1 The transmit shift register and the txdata register provide double buffering during data transmission; that is, software can write a new value into the txdata register while the previously written character is being shifted out of the transmit shift register.

The SPI peripheral receive logic consists of an n-bit (where n is a value from 116) rxdata receive holding register and an n-bit receive shift register (the number of data bits is determined by the databits PTF assignment). The rxdata receive holding register is read directly by software. The receive shift register is fed directly by the miso data pin. The rxdata holding register is loaded from the receive shift register automatically every time data is fully received. 1 The receive shift register and the rxdata register provide double buffering during data receiving; that is, the rxdata register can hold a previously received data byte while the subsequent data byte is being shifted into the receive shift register.

Software can monitor the status of a master write operation by reading the trdy, tmt, and toe bits in the status register. Similarly, software can monitor the status of a slave read operation by reading the roe and rrdy bits in the status register.

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

Slave Mode Operation

The SPI peripheral slave device behaves similarly to the master device, except it cannot initiate a data transaction. Before a transaction begins, the slave device polls its ss_n pin waiting for the pin to be driven low, which indicates the device is being addressed by an SPI master device. The SPI slave device immediately begins sending the transmit shift register contents to the miso pin. The slave device also reads the receive shift register simultaneously, polling for data on the mosi pin. Thus, a read and write transaction are carried out simultaneously.

SPI Registers

Software controls the SPI peripheral by reading from and writing to memory-mapped registers inside the Altera device. Table 2 shows a register map for SPI master and slave devices with an n-bit transmit/receive shift register operating as master and slave devices.

Table 2. SPI Register Map A2..A0 Register Name

rxdata txdata status
(1)

R/W 15...
RO WO RW RW RW
sso
(2)

Description/Register Bits 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

0 1 2 3 4 5 Notes
(1) (2)

rxdata(n-1..0) txdata(n-1..0) e ie rrdy irrdy trdy itrdy tmt toe itoe roe iroe

control reserved slaveselect

Present only on master Slave select maskpresent only on master

A write operation to the status register clears the roe, toe, and e bits. Only for SPI masters.

rxdata Register
Software reads received data from the rxdata register. When new data is fully received via the miso input, the status registers rrdy bit is set to 1 and the data is transferred into the rxdata register. When software reads a value from the rxdata, the status registers rrdy bit is cleared. If data is transferred into the rxdata register when the rrdy bit is set (that is, when software has not retrieved the previous data), a receive-overrun error occurs and the status registers roe bit is set to 1. New data is always transferred into the rxdata register, whether or not software retrieved the previous data.

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

Writing data to the rxdata register has no effect.

txdata Register
Software writes data to be transmitted directly into the txdata register. Data should not be written to the txdata register until the transmitter is ready for new data, as indicated by the status registers trdy bit. If data is written to the txdata register when trdy is 0, a toe error is generated and the contents of the txdata register are undefined. The trdy bit is set to 0 whenever software writes data into the txdata register. The trdy bit is set to 1 when data is transferred from the txdata register into the transmitter shift register, indicating an empty txdata holding register. For example, assume that the SPI peripheral is idle and software writes data into the txdata holding register. During the idle phase, the trdy bit is set to 0, but after the data is transferred into the transmitter shift register, trdy is immediately set to 1. Software begins writing a second data byte into the txdata register, and again the trdy bit is set to 0. However, this time the original data byte is still in the process of being transmitted over the serial mosi pin. Accordingly, the trdy bit remains at 0 until the transaction cycle ends. When the cycle ends, the second data byte is transferred into the transmitter shift register and the trdy bit is again set to 1.

status Register
The status register consists of bits that indicate particular conditions inside the SPI peripheral. The status register can be read at any time by software, and doing so does not change the value of any of the bits. Each bit is associated with a corresponding interrupt-enable bit in the control register, as discussed in control Register on page 7. If a status bits corresponding interrupt-enable bit equals 1 at the same time the status bit equals 1, an interrupt request is sent to software.

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

The status register bits are shown in Table 3: Table 3. status Register Bits Bit Number Bit Name
3 4 5 6 7 8 roe toe tmt trdy rrdy e

Description
Receive overrun error. Transmitter overrun error. Transmitter shift register empty. Transmitter ready. Receive ready. Error

roe Bit
The roe bit is set to 1 if data is received while the rxdata register is full (that is, while the rrdy bit is set to 1). If the receive overrun error (ROE) occurs, the new data overwrites the old. The roe bit is set to 0 when software performs a write operation to the status register.

toe Bit
The toe bit is set to 1 when data is written to txdata while the register is still full (that is, while the trdy bit is set to 0). If the transmitter overrun error (TOE) occurs, the new data is ignored. The toe bit is set to 0 when software performs a write operation to the status register.

tmt Bit
The tmt bit is set to 0 while a transaction is in progress and set to 1 when the shift register is empty.

trdy Bit
The trdy bit is set to 1 when the txdata register is empty.

rrdy Bit
The rrdy bit is set to 1 when the rxdata register is full.

e Bit
The e bit is set to 1 when either toe or roe is set. This is a convenience for the programmer. The e bit is set to 0 when software performs a write operation to the status register.

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

control Register
The control register consists of data bits that control the SPI peripherals internal operation. Each bit in the control register enables an interrupt for the corresponding bit in the status register. The value in the control register can be read at any time by software. The control register bits are shown in Table 4: Table 4. control Register Bits Bit Number
3 4 6 7 8 10

Bit Name
iroe itoe itrdy irrdy ie sso

Description
Enable interrupt for a receive overrun error. Enable interrupt for a transmitter overrun error. Enable interrupt for a transmitter ready. Enable interrupt for a receiver ready. Enable interrupt for an error. Override SS_n output.

The control bits iroe, itoe, itrdy, irrdy, and ie allow software to determine which, if any, of the SPI peripherals internal conditions result in an interrupt request. Each bit in the status register has a corresponding interrupt-enable bit at the same bit position in the control register (see SPI Register Map on page 4). For example, the status registers bit 7 is rrdy, and the control registers corresponding bit 7 is irrdy (interrupt-enable, receiver ready). For each status register bit, an interrupt request to software is generated if both the status bit and its corresponding interrupt-enable bit are set to 1. Bit 10 of the control register, sso, does not enable an interrupt source. Instead, it can be used to force the SS_n output or outputs active at any time. sso can be used to transmit or receive data of arbitrary size on the SPI link. See Figure 1 on page 8 for an example that demonstrates sending 24-bit data over an 8-bit SPI master. 1 The received data is read, but not saved, which is not strictly necessary, but avoids receive overrun errors.

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

Figure 1: Code Example for sso Control Register

// Force SS_n active: na_spi_0-> np_spicontrol |= np_spicontrol_sso_mask; for (i = 0; i < 3; ++i) { // Transmit a byte: while (!(na_spi_0->np_spistatus & np_spistatus_trdy_mask)); na_spi_0->np_spitxdata = data[i]; // Read and throw away the received data: while (!(na_spi_0->np_spistatus & np_spistatus_rrdy_mask)); na_spi_0->np_spirxdata; } // Wait until the last byte is transmitted: while (!(na_spi_0->np_spistatus & np_spistatus_tmt_mask)); // Release SS_n: na_spi_0-> np_spicontrol &=~np_spicontrol_sso_mask;

slaveselect Register
The slaveselect register sets the select bit mask for slave devices driven by the SPI bus master device. The slaveselect register is only present when the SPI peripheral is configured as a master device. The slaveselect register can be used to address up to 16 slave devices by setting the corresponding bit. For example, to select slave device 0, bit 0 in the slaveselect register must be set to 1. The SPI master device can also interface to multiple slave devices simultaneously by setting the slaveselect bits for each desired device. For example, to select slave devices 1, 5, and 6, the slaveselect register bits 1, 5, and 6 must be set to 1. 1 Exercise caution when selecting multiple slaves simultaneously. Contention may result on the miso pin.

A reset sets bit 0 and clears every other bit of the slaveselect register. Thus, after a device reset, slave device 0 is automatically selected.

Software Data Structure

typedef volatile struct { int np_spirxdata; int np_spitxdata; int np_spistatus; int np_spicontrol; int np_spireserved; int np_spislaveselect; } np_spi;

// // // // // //

Read-only, 1-16 bit Write-only, 1-16 bit Read-only, 9-bit Read/Write, 9-bit reserved Read/Write, 1-16 bit, master only

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

Software Subroutines

Table 5 lists the SPI software subroutines available in the Nios library (lib directory in the custom SDK) when one or more SPI peripherals are present in the Nios system. These functions are declared in the include file nios.h. Table 5. SPI Software Subroutines Subroutine
nr_spi_rxchar nr_spi_txchar

Description
Reads a character from the SPI peripheral whose address is passed as an argument. Sends a single character to the SPI peripheral whose address is passed as an argument.

nr_spi_rxchar
This subroutine reads a character from the SPI peripheral whose address is passed as pSPI.

Syntax
int nr_spi_rxchar(np_spi *pSPI);

Parameter
The pSPI parameter is a pointer to the SPI peripheral.

nr_spi_txchar
This subroutine sends a single character, i, to the SPI peripheral whose address is passed as pSPI.

Syntax
int nr_spi_txchar(int i, np_spi *pSPI);

Parameters
Parameter
i pSPI

Description
Character to be sent Pointer to the SPI peripheral

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

PTF Assignments

Table 6 lists the SPIs PTF parameters. Detailed descriptions follow the table.

Table 6. SPI PTF Parameters Parameter

clock_freq ismaster databits targetclock numslaves clockpolarity clockphase lsbfirst extradelay targetssdelay delayunits clockunits Notes
(1) The Section column describes the parameters location in the PTF: S/WSA = SYSTEM/WIZARD_SCRIPT_ARGUMENTS M/WSA = MODULE/WIZARD_SCRIPT_ARGUMENTS

Section(1)
S/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA M/WSA

Type
Integer Boolean Integer Integer Integer Integer Integer Boolean Boolean Decimal String String

Allowed Values x1
1, 0 1 .. 16 >0 1 .. 16 1, 0 1, 0 1, 0 1, 0

Default
33333000 1 8 128 1 0 0 0 0 100 us kHz

Units
Hz bits kHz bits seconds

0
ns, us, ms, s MHz, kHz, Hz

clock_freq
The clock_freq assignment is the global system clock frequency. This setting is derived from the system PTF, and is not set by SOPC Builder.

ismaster
When ismaster is set to 1, the SPI peripheral is a master device. When ismaster is set to 0, the SPI peripheral is a slave device.

databits
The databits assignment determines the SPI peripherals send and receive size. That is, it sets the number of bits transmitted or received by the SPI peripheral. The databits assignment also determines the rxdata and txdata register sizes. For a master and slave SPI to work together, databits must have the same value for both peripherals.

10

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

targetclock
The targetclock assignment determines the SPI peripherals target clock frequency. The SPI devices actual frequency may not actually be the targetclock value. The only possible values for the achieved clock frequency are: ( <system clock frequency> ) [ 2, 4, 6, 8, ] The actual frequency achieved will not be greater than the targetclock value, based on the system frequency specified. For example, if the system clock frequency is 33333000 Hz and the targetclock value is 16000000 Hz, then the actual clock frequency is 8333250 Hz, or a clock divisor of 4 (because a clock divisor of 2 would create a clock frequency greater than 16,000,000 Hz). 1 When ismaster is set to 0, this assignment is ignored.

numslaves
The numslaves assignment determines the number of slaves a master can address. For every slave specified, a chip select pin is added to the SPI master peripheral. 1 When ismaster is set to 0, this assignment is ignored.

clockpolarity
When clockpolarity is 1, the clocks idle state is high. When clockpolarity is 0, the clocks idle state is low.

clockphase
When clockphase is 0, data is latched on the SPI clocks leading edge, and data changes on the SPI clocks trailing edge. When clockphase is 1, data is latched on the SPI clocks trailing edge, and data changes on the SPI clocks rising edge. Figure 2 through Figure 5 on page 12 illustrate the SPI pins possible behaviors based on the clockpolarity and clockphase values.

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11

Nios SPI Data Sheet

Figure 2. clockpolarity = 0, clockphase = 0

SS_n SCLK DATA_OUT MSB LSB

Figure 3. clockpolarity = 0, clockphase = 1

SS_n SCLK DATA_OUT MSB LSB

Figure 4. clockpolarity = 1, clockphase = 0

SS_n SCLK DATA_OUT MSB LSB

Figure 5. clockpolarity = 1, clockphase = 1

SS_n SCLK DATA_OUT MSB LSB

lsbfirst
When lsbfirst is set to 1, data is transferred LSB-first. When lsbfirst is set to 0, data is transferred MSB-first.

extradelay
When extradelay is set to 1, a master SPI peripheral inserts a delay between the falling edge of a chip select to a slave peripheral and the first shift transaction, as shown: Figure 6. extradelay=1
SS_n SCLK

12

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

When extradelay is set to 1, the targetssdelay assignment is enabled. 1 When ismaster is set to 0, this assignment is ignored.

targetssdelay
The targetssdelay assignment determines how much extra delay a master SPI peripheral requires between the falling edge of a chip select to a slave peripheral and the first shift transaction. The SPI peripheral, however, utilizes a delay granularity equal to SPI clock period. Thus, the actual ssdelay is the targetssdelay rounded up to the nearest multiple of the SPI clock period, as shown in the following equation: p = sclk_period ; delay = t arg etssdelay p ---------------------------------p sclk_period is the period of the sclk frequency. See targetclock on page 11 for details. 1 When either ismaster or extradelay are set to 0, this assignment is ignored.

delayunits
The delayunits assignment determines the unit of measure to be used for the targetssdelay assignment.

clockunits
The clockunits assignment determines the unit of measure to be used for the targetclock assignment.

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Nios SPI Data Sheet

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